David Rafferty: History twisted, principles hidden

Published 7:32 pm, Friday, March 8, 2013

Our four state legislators were recently asked eight general questions in an attempt to understand the thought processes, and maybe the principles, which will guide them as gun control legislation is being crafted. Kudos to Mr. Camillo for answering two of the questions, but the 100 percent silence from the others is breathtaking. Mr. Frantz and Ms. Floren, who are usually happy to discuss pending legislation, continued to remain mum at a Town Hall meeting this past week. Don't disrupt the democratic process while our bi-partisan panel looks into the matter, they say. Heaven's no, please don't ask questions about how we think; our principles may not match our politics.

See, even in the Hedge Fund Capital of the World there is an underbelly of delusional right-wing extremism that wraps itself up in a comfy blanket of 1950's Eisenhower conservatism and lives right alongside the majority of folks in town who identify themselves as Republicans. Your standard Greenwich Republican and Democrat have serious, yet healthy policy differences, but they can usually cooperate and often see eye to eye. But it's that "base" of hard-right zealots that our representatives are concerned about. And that's a shame because like so many things, that "base" is way off base.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The gun-loving right adores this singular quote from Thomas Jefferson, but rarely do they reference its context. T-Jeff was responding to the armed insurrection known as Shay's Rebellion back in 1786-87. In a nutshell, Shay's was the blowback that came as a result of the lousy economics of the time, leading some debtor citizens to lose their land. An insurrection was mounted mostly in rural Massachusetts and two things happened: First, Massachusetts realized there was no national army to put down the rebellion and so created a "well organized militia" to deal with it; and second, the "founding fathers," all of whom were the aristocracy of this new nation, were freaked out.

In fact, George Washington was so alarmed by Shay's that he agreed to preside over the Constitutional Convention, which was supposed to revise the Articles of Confederation. But Shay's helped illustrate the need for a strong central government and the Articles, the flawed document which instilled most sovereignty at the state level, was replaced with We The People and the Constitution. So, if you believe in the sanctity of the Constitution and the Second Amendment, you have to accept that the goal of the framers, especially in light of the fact that armed rebellion was an all-too-real likelihood, was to create a strong central government with a citizen-based military force capable of putting down insurrections, not to enable or encourage uprisings.

But today, there is this fantasy that the intent of the framers was to encourage uprisings over grievances, so we can violently resist our own government when the black helicopters arrive. Nonsense. The last thing the all-white, all-rich, all-male founding fathers wanted was an armed population to resist the constitutionally elected government. The white, male population was to be armed so that militias (in addition to being a cheaper alternative to a Continental Army) could be formed to repulse uprisings like Shay's, the Whiskey Rebellion, attacks by Native Americans, slave revolts and so on. In fact, Jefferson's quote would be used later when as president he would consider the Constitution a gross over-reach of powers. So strict Constitutionalists, be careful whose quotes you adopt.

But our legislators choose to pander to those who've distorted the intent of the Second Amendment. Norman Rockwell's iconic "Freedom From Fear" painting shows mom and dad tucking their children into bed; an everyday affirmation of love with much greater significance today in Newtown. When our representatives and senator were asked what they thought, not about specific gun legislation, but just about certain concepts that might someday become legislation that could help secure our fundamental human right to live free from fear, they looked into the vortex of half-truths, red herrings and paranoid fantasies concocted by their base and blinked. People in Greenwich deserve to know the principles our officials stand for, not just what legislation they'd support.